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Slashback: Indy, Kaneko, Swindling
Can good money drive out bad at least sometimes? News for nerds writes "Following the earlier news about the arrest of the Winny P2P app creator, KANEKO Isamu, researcher at the U-Tokyo and well-known hacker in the 3-D physics simulation scene in Japan (His first public Winny demo by his anonymous alias '47' was the graphic simulation of the network topology), the group of software technicians separate from Kaneko's lawyers has raised over 10 million yen ($88,347) in 10 days for the lawyers. It claims "The situation of the activities that technicians usually carry out being deemed a crime all of a sudden and arrests being made is seriously shrinking software research and development.""
A minor setback to the oligarchy of lawyers. Ellis D. Tripp writes "The SCOTUS has refused to hear an appeal of a 5th circuit court decision declaring that building codes such as the National Electrical Code lose all copyright protection once they are adopted into municipal law. Under this ruling, such codes can be freely posted on the internet or otherwise distributed for free, rather than requiring contractors or other interested parties to purchase them at often exorbitant prices each time they are revised. The original defendant, Peter Veeck, was sued by Southern Building Code Congress International for making their "Intellectual Property" available on his website."
Why does it have to be snakes? ChrisHanel writes "A follow-up to a story ran on Slashdot last year: The legendary shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark is screening next month at the first ever large scale Fan Film convention in Worcester, Mass. Tons of fanfilms and filmmaking workshops, and to get past the legal snafus, the fanfilms themselves are free to the public. A rare chance to check out this gem of a film."
Speaking of unconventional media origins, koa writes "This may be an Internet first: a mainstream television show spawned from a genuine internet phenomenon. Odd Todd will be piloting his own animated series on Comedy Central sometime early 2005 based off of his hit website. Press release here. Are we noticing an emergence of a new trend of media to look for original plot ideas from wilds the 'net?"
There is power in a union, evidently. XopherMV writes with the upshot (via Yahoo! News) of last weekend's strike at SBC: "The union wanted access to positions in SBC's emerging sectors, including Internet support and wireless data service. That work is now handled largely by lesser-paid contract workers, many of them in India and the Philippines. The tentative contract calls for SBC and the union to work together to bring the technical support jobs back to the United States when the current contract expires in two years.""
Trust me, ma'am, I was hired to fool you. Cold Drink writes "Part two of a previously Slashdotted story tells the tale of how social engineer Isreal was thwarted. When employees follow proper procedures, social engineers can be stopped dead in their tracks. Read on to find out how one person protected tens of thousands of dollars."
IWILL try to get one of these. We mentioned a few days ago a small dual-Opteron system promised from IWILL; many readers expressed skepticism about its internal configuration, memory slot allocation, power requirements, etc. An anonymous reader writes "it appears a lot of the questions have been answered in regards to the board and cooling configuration over at Hexus. They appear to have snapped some pics of this little beast."
That's awfully enterprising of Claria. gbulmash writes "Nordstrom Corporate Communications has composed an official response to complaints about L.L. Bean's allegations and is e-mailing it to customers.
I received the following letter:
'Thank you for taking the time to email Nordstrom with your concerns. We were disappointed that L.L. Bean did not contact us and allow us the opportunity to investigate this matter before they filed a lawsuit against us.
I would like to address your inquiry about Claria specifically. Nordstrom currently has no relationship with Claria and hasn't had a relationship with them since late 2001 when we tested their services for a 4-month period and concluded we and Claria were not an acceptable fit. To our knowledge, Nordstrom does not engage in the form of advertising described by L.L. Bean in the press. We have worked very hard to earn our customers' trust. We understand how important privacy is to our customers and we do not look to partner with advertisers that violate their privacy in any way.
Marketing on the Internet is a complex process and if our ads are in fact appearing on L.L. Bean's website, it is without our knowledge or consent. Please know that we are looking into this and will take appropriate action if we find the practice is in fact occurring.
Please know that we appreciate you as a customer and hope we will have the opportunity to serve you and your wife in the future.
Thank you again for your feedback.
Sincerely,
Deniz Anders
Corporate Communications
Nordstrom, Inc.'"
As it has passed the legal mess to get shown at this film convention, then I hope that bodes well for some sort of wider release (perhaps in some non-profit form?) Otherwise I don't think I'll ever get a chance to see it, being over in the UK.
Trust me, I'm a doctor.
Are we noticing an emergence of a new trend of media to look for original plot ideas from wilds the 'net?"
Yeah but the really good stuff just wont get shown by the pussy US networks. Can you imagine Trey Parker and Matt Stones "Princess" cartoon even being looked at by the tv execs? When macromedia saw it they were pretty pissed off (they had made a deal for a new cartoon). do a google for it its brilliant!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Some might argue South Park beat them to it. Sure, it wasn't originally made for the Internet, but its popularity once it hit the net surely was a big part of them getting a show.
But if you don't think that counts, Tripping the Rift definately should.
First off, if the first theft of merchandise had been an actual theft, and not a test. They would have not known about for at least a couple of hours, if ever. Leaving plenty of time for him to complete a second or third attempt.
The thing to look at here is that without that phonecall (which in all likelyhood would not have occured if this wasn't a test) the second attempt would have likely succeed. Also another point to know is not all stores have loss prevention people working at them all the time. In fact i could name several stores in my area that do not have them present at all.
Anybody with enough brain power and the ability to think on their feet can accomplish feats like this. In most stores the incompentence of the employees makes me laugh. There have been many instances where i have stopped attempts like this in my previous jobs, and unfortunately some where procedure prevented me from doing so.
A Fatal OE Exception has occurred, Sig will now reboot.
So the fellow from Nordstrom says that they are not buying the pop-up ads on the LL Bean site. OK.
A quick Google search for "nordstrom affiliate" shows that Nordstrom has a 5% affiliate program.
So perhaps all the "affiliate sites" are the ones buying the pop-up ads?
Does anyone know how to see the fanfilms being played at fanzillacon without going to Worcester? They are being played for free...but no recording is allowed. It's unethical and illegal to sell these films...but are electronic copies being given away somewhere? I didn't see any downloads on the fanzillacon website.
What,
The world needs is a DMCA compliant method to copyright something that lawyers/politicians need real bad. Or maybe a patent...
Access to prescriptions or something similar would work.
Then they would see the craziness that IP law is evolving into and want to do something about it.
Hopefully they would do something that would prove to be discriminatory against the general populace and the whole blooming IP mess could be stricken down by the Supreme Court.
Any ideas?
Caution: Contents under pressure
3) if it's that fscking expensive, maybe they're introducing too many regs... do without!
Supply and demand. Lawers are expensive because they're needed. If you stop writing laws because it's too expensive, someone will see an opening and offer to write laws for cheaper (since it's better than 0). In order to compete, the rest of the lawyers drop prices accordingly. Eventually, some start to bump them up as they get busier.. rinse and repeat.
Speak before you think
To play devil's advocate:
The public is not being denied access to the law, there is simply a fee for obtaining a copy of it. There is a very important difference. The law IS free (as in speech), just not gratis. If it was gratis, as Patry points out, the overall cost would likely be much higher for everyone.
Of course, John Q Homeowner can't do squat with building codes anyway. At least in NY, you need to have a state license (PE, RA, licensed contractor/installer, etc) to get any kind of valid construction permit. If you're not licensed (or have not retained someone who is), then what you will be building is basically illegal anyway and chances are you won't give a hoot about codes. For example: Erecting a shed, putting a small addition on your house, building a deck, installing a pool, putting up a fence, etc.
=Smidge=
> from wilds the 'net?"
Show business needs to look somewhere for original plot ideas. They most definitely have none in Hollywood nor with the studio Exec's in NY and FL. There is so very little decent, quality programming on TV. And in movies it's almost not worth owning a VCR/DVD player, or a TV for that matter.
I have the fortune of having a 7 year old son. It's just him and me picking our own entertaimment. For that reason I tend to watch a number of cartoons on Nick and the Cartoon Network. He loves "Spounge Bob" & "Kids Next Door." I can watch them with him but I don't get the same enjoyment from them as he does. However, there is a block on the Cartoon Network now called "Migusi" which airs from 1700 to 1900. We watch "Totally Spies", "Code Lyoko", "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and "Teen Titans". Code Lyoko is really fun and out there. The Turtles have always been a hoot and the Teen Titans are just plane cool. Not to mention their theme song is by Puffy AmiYumi.
As for moview, we have the majority of the Godzilla collection and the first three Tremmors movies (still need the 4th one). Got a number of Pokemon and assorted cartoons (not to mention the virtually manditory Disney movies). My personal movie collection, i.e. the ones daddy gets to watch, are about half F&SF and half Kurosawa/Mifune/Shimura films and their like (CT/HD & The Last Samuri being the most recently made). We'll just skip over the videos in the box on the top shelf of my bedroom closet for now. ;-)
What was I talking about?!? Oh, yeah! That the "entertainment industry" is full of brainless idiots who wouldn't know a good story or show if it hit them in the head.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
Just today, I was re-reading a commentary on a 2001 case involving work place law. The case involved a claim that a company's work place rule prohibited employees from using abusive or sexually suggestive language (put in place in order to comply with regulations holding employers for the actions of employees that might cause a "hostile work environment") constituted an "Unfair labor practice", in that preventing racial and sexual slurs had a "chilling effect" upon labor negotiations. This charge was brought by a union trying to nullify the results of an unsuccessful unionization vote at the company, using the claim that, because many union organizers have difficulty speaking to management without calling management "bitches" (one company rep was a woman) and a slew of other names offensive to just about any ethnic, sexual, or religious minority.
The National Labor Relations Board agreed, and nullified the election, as well as imposing fines for the ULP.
It was, of course, appealed by the company. The judges reviewing the case were perplexed; could the NLRB representative come up with a work place rule that would comply with both the regulations and the NLRB's rulings on those regulations? He was unable to... because the rulings made no sense.
The regulations themselves aren't really in conflict. But they're so vague as to make it possible for conflicting rulings, which happened. The NLRB seems (according to the author) to rule whichever way favors current labor interests on the "hostile" vs. "unfair" issues.
Meant to check into how it was resolved... The commentary (from 2001) was written while it was still being reviewed.
The funniest part of this for me is the posturing that SBC did before the strike. Every article you read quoted some stiff from SBC saying how there would be absolutely, positively, NO impact to the customer.
I happen to work for SBC. The part in the article were it says they outsourced to contractors, that is me, though I am not in India or the Phillipines. Aside from how useless my indian counterparts are due to the language barrier (and no matter what a bean-counter tells you, there IS a language barrier), we had no access to several departments due to the strike.
Maintenance and initial setups have been delayed, some by as far as a few days. I think SBC saw what this could do if they decided to do it again, and it scared the hell out of them. They had to close down certain depts. I can't transfer some calls that need to be transferred, because those departments are trying to catch up to what was missed.
It is fscking incredible that anyone would think it reasonable to be governed by laws that you have to pay to see.
On the flip side, wouldn't this make it a lot easier to claim ignorance? Right now if you go to court and say "Sorry, your honor - I didn't know that the thing I did was not allowed", your honor is going to put your butt in jail where you will have plenty of time to study that law. On the other hand, if you say "Sorry, your honor, but I do not have the funds to buy access to all laws that may or may not apply to my daily activities. Hence, I had no way of knowing that I was violating the law. My ignorance of the law is not my choice but rather the result of a deliberate withholding of the text of law from me, so ultimately the one who withholds the law is the one who is responsible for my miscondict.", then you may stand a chance.
Sounds absurd, isn't it? Well, maybe not so absurd as one would think. Think of your cable modem provider.
- Sir, you've exceeded your reasonable bandwidth usage this month. If this repeats, we'll terminate your account
- I thought the access was unlimited...
- It is unlimited, but you've used that unlimited service a lot more than anyone else in your neighborhood, and thus are over your limit.
- What is my my monthly limit?
- We can't tell you, because there is no limit, but if you go over it again, your account will be terminated. So make sure not to do that again.
Jobs? Which jobs?